Reflecting at the end of my term on the Board of Directors, I am amazed at how much is happening at Riverside now. When I joined the board twelve years ago, Riverside was vibrant and fiscally sound. The staff was providing high quality services with an extraordinary measure of kindness and respect. The surprise is that such excellence could be so improved.

Even more people now are receiving services that continue to be recognized as superior by all the accrediting agencies. They receive the training and support they need to become contributing members of their community both at One Cottage Street and with employers throughout the area. Businesses increasingly turn to Riverside for contract packaging and fulfillment services. Riverside Rehabilitation has grown to provide occupational, physical and speech therapies across New England.

Most gratifying of all is that hundreds of individuals from our larger community have accepted an invitation to one of the Riverside tours, the East of Paradise Spring Auction, or the open studio events at One Cottage Street. They have seen for themselves why so many people like me devote their time and charitable dollars to Riverside Industries. The progress and the joy that is possible when people who are different take the time to know, teach and enjoy each other is tremendous.

Roger Anderson
October 2006

The gratifying part of writing this short piece for each of the last twenty years is that there is still an agency to chronicle, i.e. the first rule is to stay alive. In the last decade and more that life has been reasonably prosperous for a human service agency in Massachusetts, thus exhibiting the second rule: get lucky and stay lucky. Now these rules engender a third (as you would expect from one plus two): make high quality services the norm. This third rule closes the loop and reinforces the first two by a corollary: a tri-podded structure is very stable.

So this where I think Riverside is at age thirty-eight, a place it strives to nurture with the instruments of a talented, energetic and enduring staff and a highly-engaged clientele working at improving their lives.

Ron Bittel
October 2006